Asylum seekers and corrosive substance crimes 229/2024

FOI Reference: 229/2024

Request:

1.The total number of individuals who have sought asylum in the UK and have been convicted of crimes involving the use of corrosive substances or similar chemicals in attacks, within the last 12 months.

2.If possible, a breakdown of these convictions by:

Type of offence

Location (e.g., city or police district)

Sentence received

 

Response:

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.

I can confirm that the cost of determining whether any information relative to this request is or isn’t held is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond therefore we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12 (2) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Dyfed Powys Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies. The following exemption has been applied to the whole of the information you have requested:

Section 12(2) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

Section 12(2) states: “…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The cost of determining what information is held, if any, relevant to your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the “appropriate level” as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. It is estimated that it would exceed 18 hours (i.e. minimum of 3001 hours) to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @ www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244

The Freedom of Information Department has been advised that the information in relation to the whole request is not held in an easily retrievable format. This is due to the fact that with our current crime recording system, we would have to manually review each violence against a person offence to ascertain if it involved the use of corrosive substances, as there is no applicable filter we can apply.

Therefore, in order to ascertain if there is any information relevant to your request, every violence against a person offence crime record created during the timeframe specified would require interrogation.

It has been established that there are a total of 18007 violence against a person crime recorded that would require individual interrogation and it has been estimated that it would take an average of 10 minutes to research each individual record. The relevant time estimate is detailed below:

 2023= 18007 relevant crime records x 10mins per record = 3001.1 hours

Time estimated for whole request= 3001.1 hours

 

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for the WHOLE of this request under Section 17(5) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or section 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact. You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the time shown above to fall within the 18 hours. Should you require any further advice in relation to this matter please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the Force’s right to cite exemptions if relevant.

But please also note further, as there is no recorded category for someone immigration status and again this would require individual interrogation of each offence record to see if there was any relevant information recorded in the free text area of record, this too would likely incur a further Section 12(2) response.                                       

                                                           

It should be noted that as a result of the systems adopted by Dyfed-Powys Police in relation to the recording of such information that the information released may or may not be accurate.

Furthermore, it should also be noted that Police forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide crime statistics to government bodies and the recording criteria is set nationally. However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the crime data. It should be noted that for these reasons this force's response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 08/03/2024)